i’ll note a few changes in the blog now.
—
i am keeping full posts here now. no other place. so i do apologize to my readers who enjoy reading everything all in one place, RSS readers, etc.
as you may know, for another, much more trafficked blog i write, i place full feeds on the RSS feed, as well as send full posts to facebook. and its sort of silly in the digital age to cling to envelope, eh? that is, data is everything now. no more lyric sheets that you can read with the naked eye, no more album jacket to clean herb on, no more album even, no waiting for the post office, no more video tape store—why bother with the shell anymore? we just stream all our data to anywhere in any shape at any time.
well. that is true. but i’m gonna entertain an little illusion for a bit. at least in some ways. maybe not even an illusion…maybe it’s truer to say i am going to create a bit of an homage. in the same way a person might keep only simple, sound, quality, honest items in a home, or decorate it in the style the 1800s, or of bohemia or “opium dens” as friends used to say of my own room—with the dim lighting, draping tapestries, and comfortable seating. it doesnt mean the rest of the world is following suit, but you make a place as you like to see it and be in it.
i like this style of blog for the moment. i might change it in a week. but for right now, i’m using it to tap back into my creative writing eye, and that’s important for me.
no ads, no big loud badges, no subscriber count visible, no in depth art, no busy, buzzy, Web 2.0 stuff going on at House of Nezua, never really has been that kind of place—tho in this current iteration it takes that simplicity all the way. and that’s how i like it, and that’s how it works for the energy i bring here. i have cut off RSS feeds to facebook, which takes all of this and jams it in the same, sans-serif, narrow font you read everything in and paints it with a “facebook” style of aura on that page. i have opted only to send teasers to the RSS feed, and here is where you can read what i write here, and that’s about it. i’ve prevented even google n friends from caching pages. i can’t stop a person from taking all the text and reposting it somewhere else in some other way, but this is not about making that impossible. just about making it probable that this is where you can find these posts, and looking this way. and also, about the idea.
as you can see, i’ve changed the style of the blog a bit for now, to sort of resemble a book or two that i read when younger.
you see the capital letters, right? the first line? you know i do this at the other blog i keep. always have. since day one. if you’ve ever read the one book of mine that has been published, then you see i did the same thing. :) not many know why the choice. it has to do with a dear, dear book i had at 8, a book printed in the late 1800s. oh, uneven thick jagged page edges, creamy pulp paper, hard, small serif font all turn of the century lookin, and first line of every chapter with caps. there are actually other elements, too, that have stuck with me and my writing, but ill save that for another time, or maybe to the grave. we’ll find out i guess.
i grew up in the 70s, and 80s, too. i’m sure children of the next 100 years, 200 years…they will be much more fluid. container will mean much less to them. there will be utterly immersing virtual reality, where the flesh body matters much less. we are already on the move with internet society, which begins to discard the body for the mental activity that we all throw back and forth, with values that go so far now as to prompt 20-something yr olds to demand, quite earnestly, (i summarize/paraphrase) “is it really more valuable and enlightening of a human’s energy to meet in person versus through the computer?”
!!!
and we go there now, with the loss of container as i wrote of above re DVDs, data, media.
but i am from an analog world. and this part of myself makes sense to me. i desire and work to keep my mind fluid. it’s not really hard to return to that reflex. but some things are part and parcel of the universe that molded me. and part of that is my desire to embrace a particular shape. a style. to know it is there. to associate it with the content. i can’t stop the world, and wouldn’t. but here, and just for the moment (that’s all i can promise, aside from that i’ll change again!) i want to retain just a bit of envelope and style.
so it’s not personal. and i don’t mean to stymie your own methods—like coding a target=blank window for a link when you prefer to tab them. but it’s important to me to do this right now.
—
and you see, too, that for now i am returning to narrative a bit more. to fiction. i mean sure, i’ll always be doing this n that. (don’t a person’s lines, followed far enough, loop over and lead to each other like a Möbius strip, in reality? I think so. You really can’t color “inside the lines,” that’s an illusion!) but for a little bit, i’m going to ease away from the “self reporting” as i think of this era’s amalgam of journal/bulletin board message via “personal blog.” it’s a lie. so why not just fall full into story, then? i feel stifled by the style and expectation of style (that i at least imagine) that begins to guide the motion in this place. i am utterly bored with it, in truth.
below, you’ll see some feedback i got on facebook in a screenshot i pulled. you will also see my thoughts then on what i’ve written of today at length, but i’m posting it not for that but to say that if you have thoughts on the stories, characters, and enjoy commenting, please feel free to do so.
on the particular comment, i will say ana is probably correct. i also will take the opportunity to note that she (you) are going to be reading much in extended prose like Imurga Morning that would be left out after editing and kept as backstory that only informs the characters or pertinent start of the story (at the moment of the “catalyst” as is said in writing courses/critique, where we do join Niqo, in fact…as the ships of his people leave the planet and leave him behind, unknowingly).
and she is right that the order of this story would no doubt be finessed. and in fact, the story IS about Niqo’s sacrifice, so it succeeds so far, in this shape. because she picks up on that. that made me happy to know.
of course, as a writer you are first unfolding the narrative ideas in a raw form. (like how the people got to where they are today, ala backstory.) typically, on first draft i’ll drop terribly clunky/cliche examples of a moment in that later i’ll fashion in a more subtle or original way. like how in video editing you do bin&clip organization to rough assembly to fine tune, in many steps. if you try to do a fine tune from start to finish, you’ll wade through and back and through forever. layers are needed, like when you spray paint. (this process of one shoe on before the other is related to one of my greatest cringe-inducing thoughts in life! that i’ll die while only the first draft of anything ive written is left. agh!! don’t judge me by that crap!) and…yes, by now this sounds sort of like i’m making an excuse, but no. i’m not, cuz it would be silly and ignorant to pretend i’ll get everything perfect in a first draft. i admit i once harbored such illusions! but i do understand process a bit more now. i write this now to point it out, because i won’t be responding this way everytime i get a comment like ana’s. most probably i’ll just soak it up or thank you. (or ask further questions…or….link here!)
also, relevant very much: if you have similar thoughts or feelings when you read, please drop ‘em. i like to know the stories get inside you. and while some, like Imurga Morning may try to make sense, some do not. some simply will paint a few strokes (like Chapter Elseven) and see what else shows up in the morning glow.
honestly, ive not gone back to chapter one of Imurga Morning (tho i loved writing it so far)…afraid that if i do, ill have to do more passes, make it better, sew up those holes etc. i will have to do that, because that’s what happens when you re-read something you’ve written on a first draft! and…
i sort of dont want to do that too much in this place. i’m not looking to firm up a polished collection of work. i want instead to tend a garden of bright, new, stinking fruit to later pluck at. i want not to whittle away for hours in sawdust, but to light down here and there, quick and like a hummingbird, unpredictable to the eye, to even my own plodding mind, and then away.
thus, this blog will now be a collection of story ideas, glimpses, narratives, dialogues. they may be linear, may be fragmented, may be prosaic, may be poetic, may be beautiful, may be horrific, ugly, uplifting, confusing, vague. they may connect, they may pickup on one another. they may even blend into one another. characters may leap into another story from a separate one. scenes may even resemble my life from time to time (anything could happen) but i assure you, this is no diary. if it was a bit in the past, it is not today and probably won’t be tomorrow.
author notes, when i feel the need to “speak” directly or in a literal manner, will be labeled as such.
so—
notification of entries will still be sent to twitter automatically. but no full RSS, no facebook feed, no times square of ‘web 2.0′ gadgetry, no delicious art. just words. just black words on white pages. just the bare symbols needed to invoke the spell, to call open tiny spaces in a page wide enough for you to fall through for a while and into other worlds . . .
thank you for showing up, if you do. and if you do, i hope you also enjoy the low couches and diffused lighting.
Weave that spell and open that portal. What else is reading for but for us to fall down the rabbit’s hole and into another world?
i think some people read instruction manuals sometimes and hope not to be falling down holes. or recipes. sometimes folks read ingredients, and i think they’d be pretty pissed off too if they fell down a hole. or if you were trying to read directions to the local hardware store and you fell down a rabbit’s hole it might fuck up your head a bit.
:) thank you, my friend…
“sort of dont want to do that too much in this place. i’m not looking to firm up a polished collection of work. i want instead to tend a garden of bright, new, stinking fruit to later pluck at. i want not to whittle away for hours in sawdust, but to light down here and there, quick and like a hummingbird, unpredictable to the eye, to even my own plodding mind, and then away.”
I’m the same way, Nezua. It’s usually much better to trust your instincts rather than try to fit your vision to someone’s critique. I’m used to writers’ workshops where everyone offers suggestions for improvement. But ultimately, it’s the writer who’s the authority on his/her own work. I have a tendency to look for certain resonances or the emotional center of the story: the character’s yearning, complications, etc. I think it’s good to suggest this right at the start, even if you don’t spell it out completely. But I could be wrong. It could be that I’m longing for a “chick flick” while you have something entirely different in mind. I’ve been following you for a while, and I think you are brilliant at saying what’s in your heart to say. My only suggestion is to paint with that. My life got a bit hectic, but I look forward to reading you, whether you decide to follow my advice or not. At this stage — the rough draft — you need to be as free as possible to express yourself in your own way. So, that bit of advice was just a suggestion — just one possibility way for telling a story. There are many ways to tell stories, and I respect your choices, regardless. :-)
Hi Ana,
Well, I didn’t hear it as advice, to tell you the truth! I just heard you saying that you enjoyed more than anything else hearing about Niqo’s conflict. Which I then agreed with, noting that that was, after all, the core of the story as it was laid down. And what you probably had to plod thru a bit more was me writing backstory to myself…and I think I added in there somewhere that if I were to write out another draft, I might use less backstory and simply let it inform my telling.
Of course, I agree…and I would also argue that I did suggest his narrative and conflict at the start…and many times!
and
and
these are all indications of his central conflict that build on each other. (And there are more, too.) Which is why I’d guess a person feels interested to keep reading at all. What is going on? Why doesn’t anything matter now? What are his Other Plans?
That you did not really take not of these in your comments says to me that they worked on you in a less obtrusive way, but nonetheless, they surely worked on you, and when you got to the end where I began to rev into the heart of his story a bit more directly, your mind connected it with the beginning hints which would make for greater interest BUT you probably then felt a bit disappointed because I stepped on the rising action by ending it right there. That’s what I’m guessing. I could be wrong, of course…it’s your inner workings! But I can see from the story shape how that could happen.
It did slow down in the middle for exposition/backstory. I think that’s the part I reference when I talk about using less next edit.
I very much appreciate your engagement and thoughts, please. It’s not an issue at all. You know how to talk about story elements and I can always hear about and talk about story on that level. Whether or not I “follow advice” is really not so important, I agree. :) And sometimes I may not want to talk about the story as critique, because sometimes stories are not so fun to me to talk about that way, sometimes sticking a hand in chases away all the shimmering and fragile threads that breathe there. But I don’t mind your comments, even then, and when I feel like jumping in I will!
Thanks again, Ana.